Did Sotomayor ‘Save Baseball’? George Will Takes Issue

“Will says that “in fact, what she did was take sides, took union’s side against the management, and in so-doing, wasted 262 days of negotiations. That, far from saving baseball, consigned baseball to seven more years of an unreformed economic system, which happened to be the seven worst years in terms of competitive balance.”
George Will as baseball expert and conservative decrying the free market system in baseball?
And what measure is he using for competitive balance?
Seriously, the Yankees winning 4 World Series in 7 years with many different teams making the playoffs and 3 different champions in additon to the Yanks is somehow a worse situation than the 50′s?
From 47 to 57, the Yankees won 7 World Series playing the Brooklyn Dodgers 5 times.

George Will, as always, explains the issue from the owners’ side, not the fans.
If the owners want parity, they could do it overnight. It has nothing to do with owner/player relationships, and everything to do with playing as a league and not the White Sox, Yankees, Dodgers against everyone else.
Baseball is a joke, because the big city teams have a minimum of 10x salary over the small cities. Who can change that? The owners. Who can’t change that? The players.
In the end, the fans walked away from baseball because the owners charged too much for tickets, sequestered all the games on cable, and made going to their stadiums too expensive. And George Will cheerled all of this.

George, if “the essential theory of American labor relations” is that “the parties should slug it out” (let’s assume you mean the slugging part metaphorically), what do you call it when the owners go “outside negotiations,” as Jake notes, to change the rules on salary arbitration and free agency and hire replacement players?
If you consider that bargaining in good faith, then you must have a soft spot for the Pinkerton guards in the Homestead steel strike and Henry Ford’s goons in the Battle of the Overpass.

The only credit for saving basebal belongs to th owners. The bad judgement exercised by Sotomayor did nothing but show that bad judges do not make good decisions. This judge has made biased, dicriminatory decisions in the past and will continue to do so in the future. I for one am against her having a seat on the supreme court and have said so to my representatives in Washington. I know we can make a better choice for the seat in the highest court in the United Staes of America.

“America’s pastime is one place where Marx’s labor theory of value makes much sense,”
Yes, thats right, George Will said this in 1991…

“To laughter, the president said…”
I’m not going to bother to read any comments here and just hope that everyone who is not George Will can actually comprehend what a joke is.

George Will and Bill Kristol are notorious for being WRONG….. why ABC and others keep touting him as some kind of informed guru is beyond me.
Will & Kristol, and others constantly quote inane historical minutia trying to make themselves appear intelligent, but, both lack even basic common sense in their ‘analysis’ of political theory and commentary on current events.

What I got from George is that decisions based on anything but law have unintended consequences no matter how empathetic the ruling. Much like some would say Obama saved the US auto industry. I think we will see the unintended consequences soon enough.

When will this country start to judge people for the content of their character, not the color of their skin?
The President’s pick has been overruled 5 out of 6 times by the Supreme Court, yet she is the best the President could come up with?
One only has to substitute ‘black female’ for ‘white male’ in her racist,sexist speech to know that she sees the world through race-colored glasses.

She is a racist and should never have been nominated. The outrage over her statements is just beginning and she will never be confirmed.

most americans do not know that the heaviest artillery barrage in the world is aimed at South Korea, within 30 minutes over 200,000 will die in Soeul SK if the north launches a conventional attack
Obama better be ready on this one a UN condemation means nothing to them

whether george is right or wrong on other issues, he is dead right about this ……… thanks to this ruling, steinbrenner was able to buy his favorite players by outbidding the other teams in a way in which the others could not compete and MANY bad things happened to baseball because of this …. things which would not and could not happen in other pro sports OR at least not to this extreme … teams like the astros, a’s, and pirates were unable to hang on to the players they developed and build fan loyalty …. in fact, the only reason baseball survived the high ticket prices produced by the greed of these greedy rich players is because the economy was good and because everyone was excited about the new home run “era” which we later found was due to cheating – BAD for baseball is an understatement

Will is wrong about baseball in every possible way:
First of all, she did nothing to consign baseball to an unreformed system. She sides with the players against the owners. Do you know who keeps baseball from going to a more competitive salary cap? The owners…who are in charge. They are sleeping on top of piles of money every night, so why would they change. They are the reason the system goes unreformed, not Judge Sotomayor.
Additionally he called it the worst seven years in terms of competitive balance. This is so absurd it’s as if he had no idea baseball existed before 1994. In Those seven years, from 1995 to 2001, the Braves won the world series once, the Yankees 4 times, the Marlins once, and the Diamondbacks once. Both the Marlins and Diamondbacks were, at the time, small market clubs who had both been in baseball less than 5 years. That was the Braves only championship in years. Yes the Yankees won 4 of the 7 World Series…but what about 1947 through 1953, where the Yankees won 6 of 7 World Series, or 1936 through 1942, where the Yankees won 5 of 7 – losing in the WS in ’42 – or perhaps a larger number from 1927 to 1964, 38 World Series were played and the Yankee won 19 of them, losing in 6 of them, playing in 25 of them. They won 50% of those world series and played in about 65% of them. Why again was 1994 to 2001 the worst years for competitive balance? Maybe who wins isn’t the only measure….from 1994 to 2001 out of a possible total of 14, 9 different teams played in the World Series, as compared to 1952 to 1958, out of a possible 14, 5 different teams played in those world series (yanks, dodgers, indians, brewers, giants). Not very competitively balanced is it? Will i s dead wrong.
He then says baseball thrives because we got over the damage created by Sotomayor’s activism. Has he not seen the explosion of HR’s, abeit caused by steroids? THAT is what brought the game back to life. It’s not pretty, but Sammy Sosa and Mark McGuire chasing Roger Maris’ HR record is what brought baseball back. That and the Yankee dynasty were responsible for baseball’s resurgence. In fact, her judicial activism did nothing, the owners are the ones holding up reforming the system…which in essence means a salary cap. Will, says Obama isn’t much of a Baseball Historian…maybe he should have looked to the past….even a little bit.

Is it me or does George Will always look like he is in extreme need of an xlax?

“thanks to this ruling, steinbrenner was able to buy his favorite players by outbidding the other teams in a way in which the others could not compete and MANY bad things happened to baseball because of this”
Because before this ruling, Steinbrenner was restrained from paying top dollar for free agents?
The difference between the 80′s and 90′s were not the Yankees spending more money then everyone else it was them actually winning while doing it.
Seriously, do right wingers just make up history as needed?

I am bothered by Sotomayor’s assertion that she could render a better decision than a while male. I’m an African American female and if the same words were spoken and “African American” was substituted for “white,” I’d be furious!It doesn’t matter what context the words were used in, I’m bothered by it. It’s sexist and racist no matter how you spin it. Period.

“I think you will find similar percentages throughout baseball history in this regard. Perhaps you should learn math before making disparaging comments.”
Not really since the selection of 47 to 53 was not based on anything.
Will seems to base the 7 years on when the Yankees finally lost the WS, which makes little sense.
Also what reforms came about in 2002 that suddenly changed the competitive makeup?
Could it be two extremely well built teams (the Yankees and Braves) finally began to shows signs of decline after a long period of excellence (in the Braves case, due to corporate ownership reining in spending)?

Steroids saved major league baseball.. and skyboxes and ten dollar beer…

Sotomayor is a racist and her beliefs are contrary to the oath of office she is supposed to swear. She said appellate judges make policy! Doesn’t she know that it’s the Legislative branch that sets policy? Does she know the U.S. Constitution? We in the U.S. believe in Government of laws, not on Government of men! Governments of men are dictatorships!
We Hispanics don’t care whether Sotomayor is black, white, brown, purple or blue. What we want is someone to knows, respects and abides by the U.S. Constitution. We, like everyone else, need to be protected by a knowledgeable, honest, non-partisan judge, someone very different from Sotomayor. The last person we need is someone to apply “empathy” on us and to “inspire” us to accept the socialism/communism Obama wants to impose on us.

“Sotomayor is a racist and her beliefs are contrary to the oath of office she is supposed to swear. ”
NO, she is not, but keep up the accusations. The 31% Latino vote the Republicans managed to scrape up for this past election will look huge compared to the single digit Latino support you’ll get in the next.

The NY Times has her entire talk from Berkley posted “A Latinas Judge’s Voice” – Read the entire thing – you are completely missing the point.

No white man/woman can really understand and relate to the lives of any minorities in this country!!!!
Judge Sotomayer is not a racist but a latina woman that spoke the TRUTH!!!!

sisterdearest09, do you understand white males? Do you understand Indian males? Should we appoint judges because they understand white males, or black males, or purple males?! Judges are NOT supposed to be partisan or racist. I’m a latino woman myself, but I don’t want a racist to be appointed Supreme Court judge!

Ryan C., I agree with you. Sotomayor’s statements and actions are sexist and racist, no matter how you spin them! Those who fail to recognize that fact only demonstrate that they themselves are sexist and racist.

“Sotomayor’s statements and actions are sexist and racist, no matter how you spin them!”
Actions?
You have a single statement in which actual racists like Rush Limbaugh call racist.
“Those who fail to recognize that fact only demonstrate that they themselves are sexist and racist.”

J House:”The President’s pick has been overruled 5 out of 6 times by the Supreme Court, yet she is the best the President could come up with?”
This is grossly misleading on two counts. First, the Supreme Court doesn’t usually take cases from lower courts unless it thinks the lower court was wrong, or unless there’s a split in the lower courts that needs to be resolved. Since it usually won’t take a lower court case just to affirm, there may be a selection bias for cases to reverse. So getting most of one’s cases reversed may not be unusual.
Second, one has to look at why the cases were reversed. It could be that the lower judge was following precedent at the time (either from prior circuit level decisions or from older Supreme Court decisions), and it’s the Supreme Court that decided to be “activist,” not the lower court.
So to say an appellate judge was reversed at the Supreme Court level 5 out of 6 times doesn’t really tell you much–unless you’re just looking to score superficial political points without trying to dig deeper into the facts.

Sorry that was until 1968 only two teams were allowed into the playoffs. 1969 was the start of the “playoff system”. SO the vast majority of baseball history only two teams made the playoffs. I think it more apt to compare apples and apples, don’t you?

I can but agree totally with the comments posted by letter. I myself are an american of mexicn decent and i do think that sotomayor would try to be a actvist from the bench

It is said that Judge Sotomayor if she passes the Confirmation hearings will be the FIRST Latina that will be on the Supreme Court of the United States. But what of Benjamin Cardozo?? He was on the bench of Supreme Court May 14, 1932 to July 9, 1938!!!
Granted he is of Portuguese descent, but also a Morronos Jew as were allot from that section of the world. Morronos Jew = Swine, Converso… Forced Conversion … during the Spanish Inquisition and Crusades… usually the Crusader held a sword to their throat and said … Convert or Die, or words to that effect.
could it be that the administration is hiding facts??… I bet Ben is turning in his grave.

Sotomayor’s reported 60 percent reversal rate is lower than the overall Supreme Court reversal rate for all lower court decisions from the 2004 term through the present — both overall and for each individual Supreme Court term.

Sotomayor is an angry Marxist intellectual lightweight, not tomention a racist and sexist. Hey, no wonder the Obominator chose her.